On the eve of the 2026 Aldeburgh Festival, we are delighted to reopen the Britten Pears Building as home of the new O’Hare Music Centre, enabling us to expand our vital work in artist development, creative heath and for children, families and young people.

The building, first converted for use in 1979, is now fully accessible thanks to a new lift connecting all floors, and includes five larger music studios, with technical facilities upgraded across the building.

The upper floor houses the state-of-the-art Clore Learning Space and the entire building is thermally and acoustically insulated, part of our drive to make our buildings more sustainable.

“Benjamin Britten was a composer who liked to build things” 
Lucy Walker talks about the history of the Britten Pears Building and Britten’s built legacy in this short video.

The newly-reopened building will become the home of the O’Hare Music Centre and will house a significant new partnership with the Norfolk and Suffolk Music Hub, allowing us to grow our programmes for children and young people over the coming years. These will include a weekly Saturday school for children of all ages, opportunities for young people unable to access mainstream education and a greater focus on developing resources for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) music provision.

The inaugural Festival Academy and Summer Academy will also be based here and Aldeburgh Festival audiences will be some of the first to experience the upgraded spaces, with talks and performances taking place throughout the Festival in the revitalised Peter Pears Recital Room.

The new facilities also allow us to grow our creative health work, including programmes such as Skylarks, our singing group for people living with Parkinson's, which enables participants to maintain or improve their psychological and physical wellbeing.

The opening marks the completion of the first phase of our Capital Programme here at Britten Pears Arts, and our sights are now firmly set on the next phase which will see us restoring the much-loved Snape Maltings Concert Hall, which has been largely unchanged for over 25 years, with some of the infrastructure dating right back to 1970.

Work will include seating, which will be refurbished to improve comfort and durability, new handrails aiding access, acoustic modifications to better support amplified and spoken word events while retaining the legendary acoustic for non-amplified events, new lighting, refurbished and additional lifts, modernised toilet facilities, a new air handling system and essential remedial work to the roof.

Having already raised £14.1m towards the programme of works, we are now asking audience members to play their part, inviting them to be a part of the distinguished history of the hall by naming a seat as part of a public fundraising campaign – with one of the refurbished seats on display in the foyer of the concert hall during the Festival for you to try out and give your feedback on.

Find out more about the seat naming campaign.

Read the full press release about the reopening.

Funding for the Capital Programme

The Britten Pears Arts Capital Programme is supported with public funding from Arts Council England, and trusts & foundations, including Paul Hamlyn Foundation; 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust; Copping Joyce Foundation, East Suffolk Council Rural Business Investment Fund; East Suffolk Council Rural Business & Community Hub Fund; The Foyle Foundation; Garfield Weston Foundation; the Wolfson Foundation; the Clore Duffield Foundation; the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership; the John and Penelope Lebus Trust; the Vanneck Charitable Trust.

Individual donors include Charles & Pascale Clark; Angela & John Crowther; In memory of Stefan T Edlis; Matthew Greenburgh & Helen Payne; Keith & Frances Griffiths; Margaret Hyde, Peter & Veronica Lofthouse; Angela & Lawrence Mallinson; Lindy & Mark O’Hare; David Robbie & Fred Goetzen; Garth and Lucy Pollard, Simon & Victoria Robey; Clive & Eileen Schlee; Alan Swerdlow & Jeremy Greenwood; Sarah Zins; Paul & Sybella Zisman and other anonymous donors.